Developing good, resilient leaders was the aim of Better Factories Cambodia’s Crisis Leadership training with MoLVT officials. The trained government officials have been at the frontline of ensuring COVID-19 protection and awareness in garment factories. The team used a training-of-trainers approach to ultimately train other labour inspectors to scale impact.

The programme’s team leaders delivered the training. It took a deep dive into a range of leadership skills, including managing stress, crisis communication processes, ensuring safe and inclusive workplaces and managing retrenchments. Thirty labour officials took part in the training (13 from the Department of Occupational Safety and Health, six from Svay Rieng and seven from Kampong Cham provinces). It is too early to analyse the impact of the training (delivered in December 2020), but MoLVT has requested more leadership initiatives for its senior officials in 2021.

It has not only helped us to train or work with factories, but, internally, our teamwork has improved because we are more open-minded and are actively discussing how we can better reach out to factory stakeholders. Ms. Khieu Socheat, a participant from Kompong Cham MoLVT